I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

Was Sexism A Factor In Carol Bartz's Yahoo Firing?

You can practically set your watch by it: A powerful but polarizing woman loses her footing on the corporate ladder and the “Sexism!” cries begin. It’s happening already with Carol Bartz, who got an unceremonious phone call yesterday notifying her that her tenure as CEO of Yahoo is over.

Like Cathie Black and Martha Stewart, Bartz is a strong-willed figure whose assertiveness has made her a target for detractors when things haven’t broken her way. Might things have turned out differently if she had a power donut instead of a blond bob? Am I committing sexism right now by bringing up the bob? Do gender-influenced schadenfreude and actual discrimination always go hand-in-hand? I’m in treacherous waters here, so I’m bringing in a guest navigator who knows the shoals: my colleague Jenna Goudreau, part of our ForbesWoman team and a frequent commentator on these types of questions.

JEFF: Jenna, does sexism need to be part of the discussion here? It’s pretty hard to build a performance-based case for Yahoo keeping Bartz any longer than they did. The stock has been comatose. The strategy has been so amorphous that the board now has to hire consultants to figure out what it ought to be. How do you get from there to “scapegoating a woman”? Isn’t the job of the CEO, male or female, to be the one who takes the fall when things go south?

JENNA: The unfortunate truth is that there are so few women leading major U.S. companies that when a woman as well-known as Carol Bartz is shown the door, sexism is one of the first words to surface. We all guessed this was coming. Investors weren’t happy. In her defense, when I reached out to Bartz for inclusion on our recently published World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list (she was No. 37), she highlighted what she had accomplished at Yahoo, saying that in 2010, it doubledoperating income, operating margin and return on invested capital. That said, I think the sexism argument might also arise because of the conversation surrounding Bartz. Jeff, even you referenced her “salty” language in the lead of your piece yesterday.

JEFF: So I did. But her language is salty! Whatever they may sound like on the golf course, most CEOs don’t tend to drop F-bombs on earnings calls or at tech conferences, as Bartz was known to do. And that seemed to work out for her for a while. It was kind of her calling card. The problem wasn’t so much the language as the attitude that went with it. “Abrasive” and “alienating” were words that got used a lot to describe her management style. I know those are red-flag words, that there are a lot of male CEOs who are less than cuddly and don’t get dinged for it. And I have no doubt her manner was in part a response to swimming in that world and competing with those tough-talking alpha males. Still, I’m at a loss for how to talk about an unusually sharp-tongued, sharp-elbowed female executive who was genuinely unpopular with her employees without coming off as at least a little bit sexist. And I’m also wondering: Is it possible that sexism informed the way people talked about/wrote about Carol Bartz but wasn’t a real factor in deciding her ultimate fate?

JENNA: Studies have shown that assertiveness in women often reads as aggressiveness (read: “abrasive,” “bitchy,” etc.) and in men as strength. I honestly don’t know if sexism played a part here. Her departure may have been a bit unceremonious, though, if reports are true: A sudden firing by phone with no replacement lined up. What I’m more interested in is the macro perspective. The numbers have been pathetic for years, but now with Bartz out only 2.8% of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. are run by women. That’s ridiculous. Seen another way, men run 97.2% of our biggest companies. Yesterday was just a bad day for America’s leading ladies. BofA’s Sallie Krawcheck, often called “the most powerful woman on Wall Street,” also left her post.

JEFF: That’s a pretty astonishing figure. I didn’t realize it was quite that low. Covering the media business, it seems like I come across relatively a lot of female CEOs. Covering tech, not so much. One thing I think we can agree on: The more we enlarge the sample size of female business leaders, the easier it will be to tease out the instances of genuine sexism from those of garden-variety failure.

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Bunny (I’m assuming that’s your first name), your comment is a little over the line but I’m going to leave it because we’re talking about sexism and I think this is a pretty good example of how an executive’s sex influences the way people judge her. How do you accuse a male executive of suffering from PMS? There’s really no equivalent.

I called it like it is. If Bartz knows how to do the monkey dance than I’ll call her a baboon like I do to Steve Ballmer.

As a physician I can say with authority that ill temperament, abrasive personality being more prominent around specific time during menstrual cycle or menopause (which is more reasonable of Bartz age) is a real phenomenon.

People associate this foul temperament, sometimes irrational, borderline personality traits to PMS and menopause for good reason.

If Bartz were a male, you’d simply call her a ill tempered incompetent douche. (notice that the female reference is still there). :)

The simplest way to get a straight answer is – tell the truth. An official needs to step aside and state why, and sooner is better.

The share holders have a right to know as well!

An official statement needs to be posted NOW before it gets all out of hand. No one likes to get fired, or do they? Maybe it will spark a controversy, which seems to be the way issues like this are dealt with in the US. Get fired, get some payback.

Hopefully it is a logical and fiscal reason, otherwise you will be hearing from Gloria Allred. lol.Or, as the numbers may suggest it could be performance.

Some one should be posting the answer soon, hopefully. I would surely like to know.

I feel this is an issue having sexism inserted in it for the sake of making an issue, and in my opinion feeding into the sexism issue all over again. Its not secret yahoo has been getting worse and worse, started before she arrived, but she has done nothing concrete to change that tide, so it should come as no surprised she got fired. Had it been a man the only difference would be this article would be titled “Yahoo! continues to search for its savior” or along those lines. She was a bad choice to begin with as CEO anyway. She made her name growing a small company that was already a leader in its field into a Mid-sized company, in which she did a good job. Not turning around a big failing company in a very competitive field.

Was it anti-Semitism when Terry Semel was fired? Was it anti-Asian racism when Jerry Yang was fired? Was it anti…Kooglism when Tim Koogle was fired? No, the issue is simply that after all these years, Yahoo has no real mission, no elevator pitch. It is a collection of assets, not a real company. Carol Bartz is the latest in the growing line of executives who couldn’t figure out a way to fix the company. Might be time for the break up plan.

Eric, I agree with everything you said. My headline is a little off topic. Yahoo needed a new CEO, period. Where I think sexism comes into play is exactly how people understood the nature of her failure. I do think her personality was an issue (although not THE issue), even though her distinctive traits would be pretty unremarkable in a male CEO.

Eric, I’d also add that you seem a bit flippant about the issue of sexism even being raised, but I’d say that the above commenter equating Bartz’s personality and/or leadership with PMS shows that it is alive and well, at least, in our culture at large.